From a young age, I had pedagogic tendencies and, above all, I sang well
Jana Kaněrová was born on April 13, 1934, in Prague. Her father, František Macalík, was an agronomy engineer, and her mother, Jaroslava Skočdopolová-Macalíková, was a foreign language correspondent. She attended the eight-year Drtina Girls‘ Reform Gymnasium in Prague. At the gymnasium, she was classmates with Jana Horáková, the daughter of the executed Milada Horáková. She graduated from university in 1955 as a qualified teacher. At the Faculty of Education, she met the later founding members of the Jára Cimrman Theater – Zdeněk Svěrák, Ladislav Smoljak and Miloň Čepelka. After graduation, she and her husband, Bedřich Kaněra, moved to the Břeclav region. During her career as a teacher, she founded several choirs and, together with her husband, a successful Regina Poetry Theatre. This is evidenced by the number of awards the theatre has won, for example, at the Šrámek‘s Písek and Wolker‘s Prostějov festivals. In Břeclav, the Kaněras also experienced the events of the Velvet Revolution, including the legendary human chain to Austria. In 1993, she and her husband moved to Prague. Bedřich Kaněra got a job at the Ministry of Culture, and Jana Kaněrová retired. In Prague-Libuš, she started going to Sokol and founded the Libuše Chamber Choir at Sokol Libuš.